关键词不能为空

当前您在: 主页 > 英语 >

2010奥运会The Interlopers by Saki

作者:高考题库网
来源:https://www.bjmy2z.cn/gaokao
2021-01-21 22:59
tags:

春季-

2021年1月21日发(作者:保费)
The Interlopers
In a forest of mixed growth somewhere on the eastern spurs of the Karpathians, a man
stood one winter night watching and listening, as though he waited for some beast of the
woods to come within the range of his vision, and, later, of his rifle. But the game for
whose presence he kept so keen an outlook was none that figured in the sportsman's
calendar as lawful and proper for the chase; Ulrich von Gradwitz patrolled the dark forest
in quest of a human enemy.


The forest lands of Gradwitz were of wide extent and well stocked with game; the
narrow strip of precipitous woodland that lay on its outskirt was not remarkable for the
game it harboured or the shooting it afforded, but it was the most jealously guarded of
all its owner's territorial possessions. A famous law suit, in the days of his grandfather,
had wrested it from the illegal possession of a neighbouring family of petty landowners;
the dispossessed party had never acquiesced in the judgment of the Courts, and a long
series of poaching affrays and similar scandals had embittered the relationships between
the families for three generations. The neighbour feud had grown into a personal one
since Ulrich had come to be head of his family; if there was a man in the world whom he
detested and wished ill to it was Georg Znaeym, the inheritor of the quarrel and the
tireless game-snatcher and raider of the disputed border-forest. The feud might,
perhaps, have died down or been compromised if the personal ill-will of the two men had
not stood in the way; as boys they had thirsted for one another's blood, as men each
prayed that misfortune might fall on the other, and this wind- scourged winter night
Ulrich had banded together his foresters to watch the dark forest, not in quest of
four-footed quarry, but to keep a look-out for the prowling thieves whom he suspected
of being afoot from across the land boundary. The roebuck, which usually kept in the
sheltered hollows during a storm-wind, were running like driven things to-night, and
there was movement and unrest among the creatures that were wont to sleep through
the dark hours. Assuredly there was a disturbing element in the forest, and Ulrich could
guess the quarter from whence it came.

<

2

>


He strayed away by himself from the watchers whom he had placed in ambush on
the crest of the hill, and wandered far down the steep slopes amid the wild tangle of
undergrowth, peering through the tree trunks and listening through the whistling and
skirling of the wind and the restless beating of the branches for sight and sound of the
marauders. If only on this wild night, in this dark, lone spot, he might come across Georg
Znaeym, man to man, with none to witness - that was the wish that was uppermost in
his thoughts. And as he stepped round the trunk of a huge beech he came face to face
with the man he sought.


The two enemies stood glaring at one another for a long silent moment. Each had a
rifle in his hand, each had hate in his heart and murder uppermost in his mind. The
chance had come to give full play to the passions of a lifetime. But a man who has been
1

brought up under the code of a restraining civilisation cannot easily nerve himself to
shoot down his neighbour in cold blood and without word spoken, except for an offence
against his hearth and honour. And before the moment of hesitation had given way to
action a deed of Nature's own violence overwhelmed them both. A fierce shriek of the
storm had been answered by a splitting crash over their heads, and ere they could leap
aside a mass of falling beech tree had thundered down on them. Ulrich von Gradwitz
found himself stretched on the ground, one arm numb beneath him and the other held
almost as helplessly in a tight tangle of forked branches, while both legs were pinned
beneath the fallen mass. His heavy shooting-boots had saved his feet from being
crushed to pieces, but if his fractures were not as serious as they might have been, at
least it was evident that he could not move from his present position till some one came
to release him. The descending twig had slashed the skin of his face, and he had to wink
away some drops of blood from his eyelashes before he could take in a general view of
the disaster. At his side, so near that under ordinary circumstances he could almost have
touched him, lay Georg Znaeym, alive and struggling, but obviously as helplessly
pinioned down as himself. All round them lay a thick- strewn wreckage of splintered
branches and broken twigs.

<

3

>


Relief at being alive and exasperation at his captive plight brought a strange medley
of pious thank-offerings and sharp curses to Ulrich's lips. Georg, who was early blinded
with the blood which trickled across his eyes, stopped his struggling for a moment to
listen, and then gave a short, snarling laugh.




justice for you!


And he laughed again, mockingly and savagely.



us you will wish, perhaps, that you were in a better plight than caught poaching on a
neighbour's land, shame on you.


Georg was silent for a moment; then he answered quietly:



to-night, close behind me, and THEY will be here first and do the releasing. When they
drag me out from under these damned branches it won't need much clumsiness on their
part to roll this mass of trunk right over on the top of you. Your men will find you dead
under a fallen beech tree. For form's sake I shall send my condolences to your family.



time, seven of which must have gone by already, and when they get me out - I will
2

春季-


春季-


春季-


春季-


春季-


春季-


春季-


春季-



本文更新与2021-01-21 22:59,由作者提供,不代表本网站立场,转载请注明出处:https://www.bjmy2z.cn/gaokao/546629.html

The Interlopers by Saki的相关文章